XKCD: It's more than a comic

I just keep telling everyone that "ghoti" is how you spell the word "fish".

You take the "gh" from "laugh", the "o" from "women" and the "ti" from "nation".

I always feel bad for people trying to learn English as a second language, because while learning the "rules" isn't too bad, 75% of the language doesn't follow the "rules".

Although, of course, "ghoti" is a prime example that it's those rare exceptions that prove the rule. You have to fish around to find combinations, and provide them out of context.

Not to say that English could not have benefited from some spelling reforms, but it's a system which does have rules, but occasional exceptions, much like most languages. I'd honestly argue that it's not much different from trying to learn the gender of all of the nouns in languages that have it. "Oh, right, that word ends in an 'o', which usually denotes the male gender, but it's a shortened version of a word that ended in 'a' that we don't really use anymore, so it's actually feminine."

As a side note, I remember running into a mention that "to be" is irregular in most languages simply because it's one of those fundamental verbs that is used constantly, so reform is hard since people will just keep using the version they're familiar with.

I'd say the exceptions to English spelling rules are more than "occasional", and the rules are more like rough guidelines at best.

That being said, English is much easier to learn than other language in other respects, especially its near-total lack of grammatical inflections.

Yeah, about your sidenote...

Be isn't necessarily a verb. Or at least not one verb.

In both Irish and Spanish, there are different words for describing the condition of something at a given time and for describing something that is inherently true.

In Spanish, estar is the very for things that are transiently; for example, "He is hungry" is "Está hambriento". Ser is the word for things that are inhere while "He is a man" is "Es hombre".

Irish uses bí for things that are transiently true (tá for things that are true, níl for things that are false); "He is hungry" is "Tá ocras air". Is is the word for things that are inherently true, and unlike ser, it only has a present tense form. It also changes word order a bit; the subject of the sentence is the quality, while the object is the thing that has the quality; for example, "He is a man" is "Is fear é".

True. I'm currently studying Portuguese, and there are at least three different verbs for to be depending on permanence. And only two of them are irregular.

#2908: Moon Armor Index

Good news: if we ever need to convert the Moon into an armored shell around the Earth, it would be the second thickest in the solar system, after Pluto's.

Makes sense, Pluto's moon is basically another dwarf planet, and our own moon is the remains of another proto-planet.

This looks a bit like a short What-If answer.

Edited by C105 on Mar 18th 2024 at 12:12:28 PM

Note that Charon is much smaller than Earth's Moon and it only get as much cover due to being spread over a much smaller sphere (also in itself smaller than Earth's Moon).

Alright, this settles it. Whenever a celestial body threatens Earth, we break the moon apart to make armor.

At that point, you might as well just rotate the moon in front of the incoming asteroid.

It takes two seconds to recharge after each hit, though, so we'd better be prepared to dodge anyway, in which case we might as well use the same charm slots to increase Earth's mobility

#2909: Moon Landing Mission Profiles

Bringing the Moon closer to the Earth would indeed allow for easier mission profiles. Fortunately for us, Kurgzesagt answered the question of how bad that would be.

Oh no, someone is planning to implement that armor after all.

#2910: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

I knew it!

For anyone who didn’t grow up listening to fine Canadian folk music with their dad, here you go:

James Cameron couldn't have sunk the Titanic, he was born in 1954.

...Or was he?

Well, he's going to do a movie about time travel in a few years, and then he'll take a time travel trip back in time and sink the titanic so as to be able to make the movie titanic so he can have taken a submarine trip to the titanic wreck.

Or he's going to get mirrored about his temporal axis and sabotage the titanic at age about 42, which is younger than he currently is, which could be why it's specifically young james cameron.

Or it could be an entirely separate guy called Young James Cameron (first name young) who sabotaged the titanic.

#2911: Greenland Size

I'm honestly surprised it's Cueball there instead of White Hat Guy. Well, I guess WHG is there too, but he's not the one saying the ridiculous thing.

Edit: I have my characters mixed up. Beret Guy is the Cloudcuckoolander.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2024 at 8:28:39 AM

My mother will never let my father hear the end of it that when he was getting ready for their wedding, the inauspicious song he was listening to was "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (only came out two years before). They're still together, so I figured it would be only fitting to play it while I was getting dressed for mine.

Three? What's the third? I know ser and estar from Spanish, and the only lesson I'm seeing online that includes a third verb (ter) says that one is for "have", not "be" (so now I'm confused why it was included).

^_^ "ficar" technically means "to stay", but is also used as a form of "to be" when it comes to permanent things like buildings. Throws me off sometimes when I'm doing my Duolingo and I forget that "The post office is in the square" is a little closer to "The post office stays in the square".

Cursive Letters

Oh, my favorite, when someone tells me "Look at this beautiful handwriting!", then I try to read it, but can't. Worst offenders are the letters m, n, r, u, w, which can really be difficult to distinguish from one another.

Joke's on everyone who said that we'd all be writing in cursive when we're older, I've never done that.